If you're implying there's more movies where anthropologists save the day you gotta let me know man

So this is what peak enlightenment feels like.

I think this is actually the last movie I saw in theaters that truly emotionally affected me on a spiritual level. I think there's something about the ambiguity of how real the replicants are in both movies that is used for great emotional effect, but the way K ultimately rejected the reality that was handed to him and sacrificed himself in pursuit of a deeper humanity within himself is something that just fuckin' resonates with me man. I still tear up thinking about it.

Was an odd experience seeing that the movie was actually quite polarizing. I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about people's criticisms, and while I understand their reasoning, I ultimately don't think there's a single thing this film could have done differently that would have made its emotional impact any stronger. The biggest criticism seems to be the slow pacing, which I understand, but it irks me the most. The pacing is a staple of thoughtful science fiction, (think the original Blade Runner, 2001, Ghost in the Shell) and absolutely serves the purpose of letting the themes, setting, and underlying philosophical questions posed by the movie to stew in the mind and sink in. In that regard, the pacing in this movie is about fucking perfect. The opening scene establishes everything you need to know about the plot with zero filler. In fact, the only times the movie seems to slow down is when K is going through a psychological transformation of some sort. Trying to understand his perspective, why he changes, why meaning emerges out of the events of the movie, is the meat and bones of the whole experience. If you can't get on board though, yeah, I can imagine it being a bit of a slog.

Other criticisms like Leto's performance or the lack of fleshing out Freysa or the resistance also seem kinda silly. They each have like 5 minutes of screen time and ultimately serve their purpose in the story just fine. You don't really need to know much about them other than their motivations and their importance to the story, which I think they both do just fine. This movie is just simply not about them, and really only serve to remind the viewer that there's bigger forces at work all vying to control things in their own way.

Another criticism that caught me off guard is the accusations of misogyny in the film. The movie certainly has a lot to say about the commodification of sexuality, which is another strong point of the film imo. There's quite a lot I can say about how the movie thinks about gender identity and sexuality, and how it either contributes or detracts from our inner humanity, but there's an excellent youtube video on that topic so I'll just link that here: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=6GsXBh5PGZU

But... yeah, anyway, good film. 10/10. It's kinda strange because while I like Denis Villeneuve, I feel like a lot of his movies don't really hit the mark that well. Honestly found Dune kinda boring. Would recommend Arrival and Enemy though, those are solid. But 2049, another level man, another level.

I did too but noped out pretty quickly. It's shitty because it does seem like there's genuinely good people over there, but conversations there tend to get derailed and so wrapped up in liberal talking points, you can see the brain rot forming in real time.

I'm feeling a kind of way about it right now. I used to spend a lot of time on Reddit, and I'd usually form an opinion on something by reading a lot of the comments and trying to synthesize my own opinion by creating an amalgamation of it all. I feel like this must have worked to some degree because I actually started my radicalization over there. I'm not sure if Reddit became worse over time, but now I can barely stand it there. Maybe I've just gotten better at parsing bullshit and realized just how much of it there actually is, idk.

But I guess I feel two ways about it because if I got radicalized over there, then perhaps others can too. I personally don't have the patience to wade through the bullshit anymore, but I also kinda hope people keep fighting the good fight over there.

Was just about to post this. Weird sensation having a huge pit in my stomach with a smile on my face.

I'm a big fan of worldbuilding and historical lore in shows, so I was pretty impressed with Attack on Titan, plus the characters all seem to have rational motivations, and it was fun to piece together everything on a re-watch.

I'm a bit confused about the claims that the author is fascist. I admit I haven't looked into in great depth, the biggest evidence I've seen is that the character Pixis is based off of Akiyama Yoshifuru, an imperialist general, and that the author has stated he admires him greatly. Granted, that's not a good look, but I'm not entirely sure about the context on this, for all I know, he might admire him the same way one might admire Genghis Khan, not based on any sort of moral compass, but rather on a "Wow, that's a lot of conquering."

But I digress, regardless of the author's views, just from watching the anime twice with at least a modest amount of literary analysis ability, I can't see how the show can be interpreted as anything other than anti-fascist. Eren Jaeger is not sympathetic at all once he goes genocidal. Marley is basically a stand in for Nazi Germany and is portrayed as barbaric and monstrous. Most of the atrocities committed by the Titan Holders is based in trauma and is the direct consequence of military indoctrination and nationalistic fervor. I must admit, Armin justifying the slaughter of thousands of civilians left a bad taste in my mouth, I do wish the show went further into exploring his traumatic change in character. As it stands, he's usually portrayed as the level-headed one, so people might think of him as morally justified. But all in all, it seems like the thesis of the show is that trauma begets trauma, and nationalistic attitude is the root cause of most of it.

I mean, please correct me, I definitely do not want to be militarist apologist, but I've heard this sentiment quite a lot on the internet, and I don't think it's been satisfactorily explained to me yet.

I'm lactose intolerant, and there's plenty of non-dairy ice cream options that are fine, buuuuut... I still indulge in eating a half carton of Private Selection chocolate ice cream from time to time. Not sure why that flavor. Not sure why I always think the tummy ache is worth it. But it's what I do.

Different educational institutions handle their GPAs slightly differently, but in general, a 4.0 is a perfect A+, Then it goes down to 3.0 for B, 2.0 for C, and so on. A 3.93 GPA means the op got basically high As in all her classes.

Oh, yeah, well, yeah....

The interesting thing about that video is how some people chose to respond in the comments. tl;dw on the video, the chances of Dream getting that lucky is 1 in 20 sextillion, or 1 in 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. However, people keep making arguments like "the chances of you stepping on the specific grains of sand on a beach are similar odds" don't take into account that if everyone on Earth played Minecraft their entire lives, the odds of any one of them getting that lucky is still astronomically unlikely.

Like, I get it, some people aren't wired to understand statistics very well, but it seems more insidious than that, and reminds me of people using faulty logic to justify not wearing masks or getting a vaccine. I think it's the utter confidence they have in using faulty logic that's astounding. Like, I'm not sure if they're at least somewhat aware of their faulty logic but argue for it anyway, or if they're so entrenched in defending a position that their minds literally won't let them process any information that might invalidate that position. Maybe some mixture of both.

Mm, I'm gonna have to disagree with this take. Literally nobody is written as a good guy except for Matsuda, and he's the only one that questions whether or not he's doing the right thing. I think the point of the show is to simply ask whether or not the ends justify the means, which is why there's so much overreach on the part of the cops, and why we end up kinda rooting for Yagami even though he's a straight up psycho.

I mean, it's written for teenagers, it's not going to be insanely politically nuanced, but I don't see anything too problematic with it. It does lightly touch on political corruption and corporate greed, but the story is hyper-focused on justice, which is why basically every character is intentionally written as absolutely resolute in their own interpretation of justice, to a fault .

The only real issue with the series, and it's a big one, is that it seems to assume that evil is an innate human feature, and doesn't ever imply that bad people end up bad due to material conditions. There's a lot of catholic imagery and undertones which seem to outline the basis for the ethics of the series. I won't spoil the ending, but I wished the the show dwelled more on the problems inherent in Light's vision of the world, as it's inherently quite a fascistic one.

Maybe the 'valuable viewpoints' part, but yeah, pretty accurate

What does 'overheating' the economy mean in this context? Giving people too much purchasing power is bad somehow? People might quit their shitty jobs and have a comfortable cushion to use as leverage? The stock market bubble might overinflate even more?

I feel like it's being used as some kind of scary word so that they don't have to say some quiet part out loud, but I'm genuinely curious what that quiet part is.

I've been using 'brah' or 'bra' in the moments where I feel like 'bro' might be unwelcome. I would assume it's derived from bro, and yet feels more unisex to me.

Aw man, not sure how I never picked up on that. Even amidst complete societal collapse on the verge of human extinction, liberal politics and celebrity worship are still the primary driving forces of society.

It's actually kinda insane how we can normalize pretty much anything. Watching it happen in slow motion today makes Germany's transition in the 30s make so much more sense.